


The Revenge of Lilita Morgan

by Needs_More_Lesbians



Category: Carmilla - All Media Types
Genre: Crossover, F/F, Major character death - Freeform, Sci-Fi, Star Wars AU, someones goin to the dark side but it's probably not who you would think
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-19
Updated: 2016-10-25
Packaged: 2018-08-23 08:46:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8321479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Needs_More_Lesbians/pseuds/Needs_More_Lesbians
Summary: In which Laura Hollis has the worst luck, Carmilla is a Jedi Master who considers fighting troublesome, Senator Bellmonde is in love with Democracy, and all three are playing directly into Chancellor Morgan's hands.
Star Wars!AU





	1. The Death of Darth Luce

The death of William Luce goes as follows:  
Clarity rockets through Laura Hollis’s chest as soon as she says to herself, _Okay, that makes sense ___and figures out that sometimes her own fear can be used as a weapon.  
It’s as simple and complicated as that.  
And with that, the fate of both are sealed.  
Luce is more or less dead already.  
The fight isn’t over yet, saber bashing against saber, the occasional hiss of mechanics when they are struck aside. Hollis versus Luce, for a limited time only, performed for a solitary audience. Sith and Jedi dance, hacking and swinging and parrying and skinning, carving the air around them with beams of plasma.  
In her mind she can still hear the familiar patient reminders of her elders, but they fall upon deaf ears as soon as Laura Hollis’s Jedi teachings become null and void, and fear and rage both become a force that makes her lightsaber look almost childish in her hands.  
The outcome of the battle is obvious. It’s as obvious as the wheeling of stars and planets overhead, all things guided by some invisible hand through the whirlwind of the galaxy.  
Luce’s age and decades of experience become irrelevant. His mastery of swordplay is laughable. His wealth, his political cunning, impeccable manners, pompous taste-all fundamental in his quest to shape his personality as the most powerful man he is capable of becoming-now may as well be his execution block upon which his head is so prettily presented.  
Even his trust in the Force is gone.  
A whisper in his ear shows him that he will die, forces him to examine his own mortality with eyes as round and terrified as a child’s. William’s angular face has morphed into a mask of desperation, a look not suiting for someone of such a nature.  
For Laura, there is only terror and rage in equal quantities.  
She is standing between death and Carmilla Karnstien, and she can no longer afford to keep a level head. Yet still there is doubt, whispering incessantly to her, whispering that William had beaten her once, struck her down like a toy, would do so again with no effort, and that Carmilla would be next, crumpling like a marionette beneath the red of his blade and leave Laura alone forever, that she was not nor would ever be a match for the dark side of the Force-  
But Chancellor Morgan had said your anger is powerful, and that had given Laura spoken permission to unlock her fury, and all shadows of doubt crumble to ash in the wake of its flame.  
When Darth Luce come soaring to her, blade glinting, it’s the broken screams of her mother which emerge from Laura’s childhood to send the Sith tumbling away.  
When Luce draws upon the power of the Dark Side, a force as ancient and terrible as the darkness between stars, in order to choke the life from her throat, Sherman Hollis’s broken whisper _there wasn’t anything you could have done ___, Laura flings his hand aside.  
Nineteen years of torment have clouded her mind for far too long, and now at last she was seeing clearly. All the times Carmilla had nearly died on Geonisus, on Kamino, her father’s smoking and charring corpse in the wastelands of Jabiim, that torment had blinded her and left her flailing in the dark, a mindless machine of slaughter, her saber cutting down everything she was terrified to let touch her. But now, so simply and so suddenly, everything was as clear as a bell, her rage and her grief manipulated and controlled with masterful elegance, and Laura isn’t so scared after all.  
In this, a newfound chill and simple sight, there is only thing she needs to do.  
Win.  
So, she decides to do exactly that.  
Because Carmilla’s death is not an option.  
She decides that Luce was never going to touch her companion again. Desicion gives way to action here, as easy as flipping a switch. She moves her blade as soon as the thought crosses, and blue fire vaporizes the black leather glove, shears bone and sears flesh, and the Sith’s lightsaber drops with his severed hand, trailing a sweet smoke that smells similar to overdone pork. The lightsaber does not deactivate, still glowing a crimson fire, and Laura wants to hold it.  
She reaches out and the Force does the rest.  
And then Laura takes Luce’s other hand for good measure.  
Luce crumples to his knees, face agonized, teeth bared, and his weapon flies jovially to the victor’s hand, and Laura had the two blades at his throat in a matter of seconds because it was always supposed to end that way.  
Here and now, the only thing are two lines, one red and one blue, and William’s terrified face framed between them. She holds both blades, she does, and the red, bloody light illuminated half her face with a hellish glow.  
Luce, cringing and shrinking, hopes with all he’s able to hope with that Lilita Morgan does not plan to leave him for dead.  
Until he hears, “Excellent, Laura, truly excellent. Such finesse.” And registers this as Morgan’s voice and sinks lower, spinning and falling into himself as the next words fall like lead.  
“Kill him.” Morgan says. “Now.”  
There is no hesitation in Hollis’s gaze.  
“...Chancellor.” he gasps, helpless, his royal demeanor vanished, his confidence a memory as bitter and cold as the void of space. He, like so many of his victims, is now begging for his life. “Chancellor, surely you know the rules. Trial before execution.”  
His begging gives him no mercy.  
“I don’t recall you being fond of rules.” Morgan replies, cold and flat. “You didn’t seem to be following them when you began this war.”  
And he knows then that the plan has been crafted so masterfully that even he was reduced to a pawn. Inama’s plan has played him for a fool. The Jedi had never meant to be killed, but to be enticed, captured.  
The Jedi were the main quarry.  
“Laura,” Morgan says quietly. “Now.”  
Years of Jedi training make Laura hesitate. She looks down upon William and sees not a Dark Lord of the Sith, but a young man as confused and frightened as she is.  
“I don’t think-”  
But when Morgan shouts, “Now!” Laura is startled into obedient silence. Her eagerness to please and to prove her worth have merely given her an opportunity to do both those things at once.  
Haven’t they?  
And Luce-  
As he looks into the eyes of Laura Hollis one last time, William realizes that he has been tricked for the greater part of his life. That Lilita Morgan never had much use for him. That he had never even truly stood a chance of becoming more than an apprentice. That he is merely a tool.  
Everything he has done, all of his gambles, sacrifices, gains, visions, everything he once possessed, all the terror that the mere sound of his name had wrought, his unwavering allegiance to the future Empire, to the Sith-these have all been nothing because everything they are, everything he is, have existed only for this.  
This, right here.  
This moment.  
To be the first victim of Laura Hollis’s lightsaber in cold blood.  
The first, but perhaps not the last.  
And then, like scissor blades, the sabers cross against his throat.  
And he is nothing.

 

Murderer and victim stare at each other in silence.  
Only the murderer blinks.  
_I’ve killed him. ___  
The severed head stares just past her shoulder, fixated on something invisible. It’s lips were parted in a silent plea for mercy. The headless body folded in on itself, crumpling both slowly and all at once, blood seeping down across black robes as it sank on it’s side.  
The murderer blinked again.  
_What did I do? ___  
Was she the little girl from Couruscant, with a gift for telling stories and an insatiable curiosity? Was she the intrepid reporter, the first of both her race and gender to successfully gather data from the dark trade circles on Tatooine? Was she the stubborn, enthusiastic, troublemaking student of Jedi Master Cochrine? The girl? The hero? The lover? The Jedi?  
Could she be any of those things-could she be _Laura __-and still had done what she did?  
She was both certain and uncertain, an enigma with a shaking right hand._

The walls lurched as the ship took on a new barrage of laser fire and missiles. William’s severed head bounced almost comically before rolling away, and Laura jerked awake.  
“I-?”  
She must have been dreaming. Dreaming that she was fighting and scared and fighting more, and somehow she could suddenly do whatever she wanted. She hadn’t worried about her actions or what they would mean, she’d just made choices because she wanted to. She’d dreamed she was the most powerful person in the galaxy.  
The most powerful person in the _universe. ___  
Now she was standing over a corpse that she couldn’t make herself look at, couldn’t make herself look away from, because she’d done that, she’d really done that, and the lightsabers were still in her hands and the meaning and reality of what she’d just done tugged her down by the shoulders.  
She drowned.  
The dead man’s saber fell from trembling fingers. “I-I didn’t want…”  
Even before the words left her mouth, she could hear how weak and pathetic the protest was.  
“There isn’t any harm done, Laura.” Morgan’s voice was quiet, but still bore a stiffening approval that Laura had always wanted to hear addressed to her. “It was the right thing. Alive, he might have killed all of us.”  
The Chancellor seemed to make sense, but as soon as Laura even considered the statement she saw through the hollowness of that lie. Her shoulders began to shake, tremors seeming to run up and down her body in waves. “He didn’t even have a weapon…”  
And oh God, that was the truth-that one fact forced everything else into terrifying clarity. It ran through her like a lightsaber, but it was still a fact, and she could cling to facts. And somehow, that made her feel better. More certain. She tried to think about it again taking it slow, easing herself into the horror one step at a time-  
“I can’t believe I did that.” she said, and her voice came out stronger, more convinced. She could look at the head now. She could look at the head.  
She looked at both things and found the truth.  
It was a crime.  
She’d committed a war crime.  
Guilt struck her as suddenly as a slap. Her knees buckled, the breath seeming stolen from her chest. It tugged her down as though she were wearing weights about her neck, weights she had no chance of ever removing.  
She had nothing to say. All she could say was, “He didn’t deserve to die like that.”  
And that was all.  
She had done the wrong thing.  
“As if. Defending a Sith, that’s not something to be done lightly-and he might have killed you on a mere whim with powers like his.”  
Laura shook her head. “It isn’t the Jedi way. It isn’t the Jedi way to kill someone like that.”  
The ship lurched again and the lights flickered out.  
“If that’s the Jedi way,” Morgan said, only a voice now in the chair, “Then it’s hardly a wonder why you can never seem to get anything done quickly.”  
Laura stared at the shadow of the chair. “You can’t understand. You’re not a Jedi. You have no clue what you’re talking about.”  
“Laura, please. Can you even imagine the people you’ve saved by taking that one action? Can you?”  
“It-”  
“You did the right thing, Laura. Maybe it wasn’t right according to your Jedi rules, but you’ve just saved millions. It was easy-he hurt your friend, you wanted revenge. Justice was done.”  
“Revenge and justice aren’t the same thing. They’re completely-”  
“Don’t be a fool, Laura. Is revenge not what brought justice into being? Justice and revenge are two sides of the exact same coin, and you can spend both regardless of which faces upward. Besides, you’ve killed before, haven’t you? Did Luce deserve more mercy than the gang who killed your father?”  
“That wasn’t the same.”  
She had lost her mind on Jabiim, tortured by pain and grief and sheer hopeless rage, killing with as little thought as a lightning storm. The memory of that day was dim, distant, and sometimes she wondered if it had really happened at all, if she’d really been able to massacre that many people in one night.  
But Luce-  
She’d murdered Luce.  
Easily.  
No second thoughts during the action.  
Right here not less than a few minutes ago, she had looked into the eyes of a living being and made the choice to end its’ life. No one had forced her to make that choice. She could have followed the path of the Jedi.  
She hadn’t.  
She stared at William’s severed head.  
This was something he’d never be able to take back. Ever. As Senator Bellmonde often said, there were no such things as second chances.  
She didn’t even know if she wanted one.  
She decided not to let herself think about this. Just like she didn’t let herself think about her father on Jabiim. She put a hand to her forehead, trying to blot out the memory. “I don’t want to talk about that again, ever.”  
“So you won’t. Just like we never have to speak of what’s happened here today.” The voice from the shadows was kind. “You trust me, don’t you?”  
“Yes-Yes, of course, Chancellor, but I-” Laura half-wanted to just jump out the hatch and fling herself out into space, wanting nothing more for everything to just stop happening, just for a little bit, just long enough for her to catch her breath. She needed to catch her breath. Breathing was all she could do now.  
Looking back certainly didn’t seem to be an option.  
Spirals of inbound turbo blasts illuminated in gold streaks in the viewport behind the Chancellor. The ship quaked mercilessly, barraged again and again.  
“Laura, if you’d be so kind as to undo my restraints.” Morgan said. “I have a feeling the ship won’t be in one piece for long. I’d rather we not be here when it breaks apart.”  
As far as the Force went, the mechanisms of the cuffs were as simple as a child’s puzzle, and Laura unlocked them with a simple motion of her hand. Lilita Morgan rose, the light casting across her face, then her shoulders, and quite suddenly she was standing with only the dignity a politician-or a Supreme Chancellor-could muster.  
Morgan walked her way past the debris that littered the darkened room, steps surprisingly swift as she approached the stairs. “Now, Laura. There isn’t much time.”  
There was a sudden white burst of light from a missile which struck the ship not far from where they were located. The impact was immediate, forcing Lilita to double over and grasp at the railing for dear life and sending Laura toppling over and sliding across the floor, which had now tilted at a forty-five degree angle.  
She rolled and collided hard with bits of rubble, metal threatening to break skin. “Carm-!”  
She sprang to her feet, using the Force to clear away the rubble which had trapped her friend. Carmilla lay entirely still, eyes closed and blood caking at her temple, matting her hair where the skin of her scalp had split.  
Carmilla looked bad, but Laura had been in one too many battles to panic at the sight of blood. A touch to Carmilla’s throat confirmed the pulse, and also let Laura guide heightened perception through her friend’s body. According to the Force, her breathing was strong and steady, no bones damages. She had a concussion, nothing else.  
Thankfully, Carmilla’s head seemed to be harder than the structure of the ship.  
“Leave her, Laura. She’s going to slow us down.” Lilita was still half hanging from the railing, struggling to maintain balance. “This thing could blow at any moment-”  
“I’m not leaving her.” Laura, for an instant, looked up at Lilita Morgan and found that she hated her-then, in a flash, understood that she was simply a politician and not at all a soldier. She likely had no idea what the implications were of asking Laura to leave behind a comrade.  
“She wouldn’t have left me,” She said firmly, just in case Morgan tried again, “if it was the other way around.”  
With Carmilla unconscious and Morgan waiting and the lives of both of them falling squarely on her shoulders, Laura found herself surprisingly calm. She could focus so easily in situations of chaos, even when help seemed to be little more than a distant prayer. It was simple.  
This was what she was supposed to do with her life. Help people.  
The Force brought Carmilla’s lightsaber to her hand, which she clipped to her friend’s belt, then hoisted the limp body over her right shoulder and shifted her balance, letting the Force help her speed as she ran to join Morgan.  
“I see,” Morgan said, but then cast a wary glance up the staircase, which was now completely vertical. “Any plans for this?”  
Before Laura could even think, gravity swung again, sending the rubble rolling across the floor. All the shattered and twisted metal heaped to one side like a makeshift barricade, towering above them.  
“Well,” Laura nodded to the staircase, which was now a flat and horizontal floor, “That works fine by me. After you, ma’am.”


	2. 2

This is Carmilla Karnstien in the moment:

As she is steered onto the bridge along with Laura and Chancellor Morgan, she has no need to look or even think to understand that they had been captured, that Dooku had been dealt with, and that the people controlling the ship were far more terrified than any of them ever would be. She doesn’t have to move her gaze or turn her head to count the droids and mechanisms, or to gauge the stances of their body-guards. She doesn’t bother, once carefully letting her feet touch the ground as she was removed from Laura’s shoulder, to meet the clouded half-gaze fixed on them from a warped, metallic face.

She doesn’t even need to focus on the Force. 

She has already let the force envelop her.

The Force flows through her like a sparkling river, pure and left forgotten by mankind for millions of years, bordered by the ancient green of trees older than civilization. All she has to do is breathe and that river flows into her, streaming in and out without any need for her to focus or even imagine it. The bit of her that is a human called Carmilla Karnstien is inconsequential in comparison to the power she has opened herself to.

Currently, there wasn’t much that was not her-from the singe mark on Lilita’s robe to the scab on Laura’s right index finger, from the various algorithms humming in synch with the tattered ship to the cracks bordering the windows.

Because all of this is a part of the Force.

Somehow, curiously enough, it is in the midst of war that she is able to find clarity and strength, the same purity that she recalls experiencing as a youngling in the Jedi Temple still mastering breathing techniques when the prospect of fighting was distant and unlikely. It’s as if the dark side has decided to give her breathing room, this brief moment of clarity of which to focus and plan, without an explanation. Carmilla does not need an explanation. She needs, only, to breathe.

The demand for knowledge has no place here. It is fueled by greed, by a sense of entitlement the she has long since surrendered. All that matters is the present moment, the current seconds with which she is living.

She is in the minds of all seventeen of the battle droids, their chrome gleaming, arms laden with blasters. She finds herself in both those blasters and targets. She is all four of the destroyers waiting in static patience behind their force shields, and she is all of the trembling aliens under Voudenburg’s control. She is their clothes, their boots, even the trickle of sweat that rolls down one scaled temple, the liquid cool to the touch. She is in the electronic cuffs on her wrists which had been fastened there not long after she regained consciousness, and she was the humming electro staffs of the soldiers behind them.

She is in both her and Laura’s lightsabers as they are handed to General Voudenburg.

And she is the general himself.

She is the general’s warped ribs. She is the beating of Voudenburg’s shriveled heart, and the trace amounts of oxygen still sent through his veins. She is the weight of the blaster at his hip and she is the greedy glint behind his eyes as he examines his two new prizes. She has even found herself in the plan for her own execution simmering in the general’s brain.

She is all of these things, but of course, she is still Carmilla Karnstien.

This is why she can simply stand. Can simply wait. There is no need to attack or barter. There will be fighting, eventually, but she is in no hurry to instigate it or prolong it, perfectly content with letting it begin when it must and end when it has to.

Just as she has no need to protect her own life, either to prolong it or shorten it.

This is what constitutes a Jedi Master.

 

General Voudenburg lifted the two weapons, on in each old and withered hand, and examined them glinting in the light of the cockpit, and said, “Such trophies, these; the weapons of Laura Hollis and Master Karnstien. They’ll be put to good use, I assure you.”

“They will. Just not by you.”

The reply came from Carmilla’s lips, but she spoke without thinking or even planning. There was no need to control or strategize at all. Not when there was the Force.

And the Force asked nothing in return.

She didn’t have the time or opportunity to tell Laura to subtly nudge the Chancellor from the line of fire; part of her was Laura, and sensed her doing that already. She didn’t have time to tell Laura to code over Y3-17 and tell it to divert all bower to it’s boosters and cable-gun, because she sensed her doing this already, had spotted the plan in her mind since the bridge.

Voudenburg stood a little shorter than her. “Still so confident, Karnstien?”

“Merely calm.” From so close, Carmilla could see the hairline cracks and spots of pitting in the bone-pale structure across half of his face, could feel the resonance of the general’s electrosonic voicebox humming in his throat. She remembered the age-old riddle, one Master Spielsdorf had posed to her long ago: What is the world if not finite? What is the world if not eternal?

She said, “We could always resolve this without further conflict. If you have a means to co-exist, I would be willing to listen.”

“I’m sure you would be.” The mangled face tilted inquisitively. “Does talking your way out of things ever actually work?”

“Occasionally. I much prefer it when it does, so people won’t have to be hurt. Or killed.” Carmilla’s dark brown eyes met squarely with the single stare of pale blue. “That was a threat, by the way, in case you were wondering.”

“I understood. But you’re still going to die.” Voudenburg straightened as much as he could, ignited one lightsaber. “With your own weapon, no less.”

The Force spoke through Carmilla’s mouth. “I doubt it.”

The electrodrivers that screwed Voudenburg’s limbs together made lifting a lightsaber an effort laden task; when he lifted his arm, one could see how shakily and unevenly the bone had been repaired, maybe even hear the slight crack and groan as they remained fused against nature’s will in a pathetic imitation of life. But it was the strength that made him dangerous, a strength not even Carmilla could match-but she didn’t need to match it.

In the Force, she could sense Voudenburg’s intent to slaughter, and this purpose triggered a reaction in her before thought even so much as caught up. She had neither a plan or tactics, nor a need for either one of them.

She had the Force on her side.

The waterfall cascaded down on her, cleaning her of any thought of winning or losing. The Force, like a liquid, could take the shape of any container that was open to it, and Carmilla was no exception. The Force, also, spilled over into Voudenburg’s plan of attack until Carmilla was both it and the defense, that the two were intermingled and she had no worry of the outcome.

The following actions took place before Voudenburg even swung down, while the thought was still forming in his head Carmilla sensed Y3-17’s current sending a message through the rest of the sensors, and she sensed Laura sending down her own instructions to the droid, and it was only custom and habit that brought the slight smile to Carmilla’s face and the gentle murmur to her lips.

“Gidget?”

Even before she opened her mouth, before Laura’s nickname had slipped past her lips, a current was being sent through the droid as a shower of sparks hot enough to melt steel were cast about, end for that fraction of a second while Voudenburg’s attention was diverted, Carmilla got ready to try a little trick, a little Force magic that she’d been saving for just such an occasion.

Because since Carmilla was at one with the Force, and the Force was all things both living and dead-caught up in the eternal dance of atoms-and because the general was a misshapen mess of man and machine, it might be possible within that split second of hesitation, with just the right twist, for Carmilla to reverse the polarity of Voudenburg’s metallic fingerbones.

Which is precisely what she did.

Flesh fingers fell open and the lightsaber sprang free.

She reached out with the Force, the current directing her blade to her, the green fire ignited and twisting to sever her cuffs before the handgrip even met her palm.

Carmilla, had she not been quite so concentrated, might have been surprised that it had actually worked.

She made a half-turn to face Laura, who was already in the air, had leapt at the same time as Carmilla’s gentle murmur because Laura and Carmilla were, after all, partners. Laura’s backflip had carried her over Carmilla’s head, at just the right range for her to flick out and burn through her partner’s cuff’s with her blade. Laura landed with one hand outreached. Carmilla felt a brief surge in the energy around them and Laura’s lightsaber sang to her, igniting before Voudenburg even had a chance to swing, and the two Jedi soon stood back to back, surveying their opponents with a deadly calm.

Carmilla regarded the general absently. “Maybe you want to reconsider that offer.”

Voudenburg slammed one flesh hand to the control panel, the floor trembling under his impact. “Consider this your answer!”

He wrenched the console free with a gurgling grunt, bones twisting under the weight, and hurled it at the Jedi. They split, rolled out of the console’s way as it landed, spitting smoke and sparks.

“Fire!” Voudenburg clenched his fist as though it held a Jedi’s neck. “Kill them! Kill them now!”

For a second, there was only the continued shortening of the console and a stunned silence.

One second after that, the bridge exploded into firestorm.


End file.
